Kino, Father Eusebio

by Darryl Plummer

Eusebio Francisco Kino was a Jesuit missionary in Mexico during the age of colonization. He arrived in Mexico City to begin his missionary work in 1681 at the age of thirty-four years old, and died in 1711, in Magdalena, Sonora, at sixty-five.[1] Kino is best known for his extensive exploration and the first detailed records of Pimería Alta (Upper Land of the Piman Indians), which is an out-of-use name for the area that is now northern Sonora and Southern Arizona.[2] However, Kino’s legacy in the region consists of more than a historical source; he expanded the borders of the known European world, made first contact with the region’s Native American tribes, and altered the Southwest in ways still visible today. His importance is demonstrated by his statue that stands in Washington, D.C.’s Statuary Hall as one of Arizona’s two historical representatives to the nation.[3]

Although he conducted mission work for Spain, Kino was born near Trent, in northern Italy, in 1645.[1] He attended university in Germany and later joined the Jesuit Order after he recovered from a life threatening illness.[2] Like many Jesuits, Kino was as much a scholar as a missionary and proved to be an immediate asset in Mexico City. After first participating in a failed expedition to Baja California, he was sent to Pimería Alta, which was then beyond the rim of Spanish control, and made his home in Dolores, Sonora.[3] From Dolores, he completed many expeditions northwards, establishing over twenty new missions and traveling over twenty thousand miles into unknown lands.[4] In 1700, Kino discovered that Baja California was a peninsula, not an island as previously believed. He made the first recorded visit to places like Quitobaquito Springs and the Camino Del Diablo, as well as making the first significant contact with O’odham people who occupied these sites. His maps of terrain and tinajas (rock watering holes in the desert) in southern Arizona were used generations after his death.[5]

Kino’s expertise in cartography, linguistics, and astronomy, to name a few, provides an excellent record of the Spanish entrance into Pimería Alta, but as a missionary, he used his expertise to bring Christianity and increased prosperity to native peoples.[9] Herbert Bolton called Kino “The cattle king of his day and region,” which is a reference to the beginning of the ranching industry that is still a staple of the Tohono O’odham livelihood and later became so controversial in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument during the twentieth century. Kino, however, raised livestock solely to support the creation of new missions and feed his converts.[10] The natives, by Kino’s account, took a great liking to him as well. During the Piman rebellion of 1695, Kino remained unharmed in his Dolores chapel, and then went to Mexico City to cite Spanish cruelty rather than Piman savagery as the cause of the rebellion.[11] His remains were rediscovered in 1966 in a chapel in Magdalena, Sonora, which can be visited along with the Father Kino Museum also located in Magdalena.[12]